CRC Church Planter Assessment – Day 1

We are in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the Christian Reformed Church’s Church Planter Assessment!

It is almost 9:00 p.m., and we are beat!  We arrived to our hotel room and checked in around 8:00 p.m.  So far, I feel that this has been a wonderful opportunity!  It has been a very long and intense day, but also very enjoyable and inspiring.  There are about 15 potential church planters and also that many assessors.  How inspiring it is to be in a room with 15 other potential/future pastors and spouses.  Add to that, the fifteen assessors who have either been church planters, are currently church planters, or feel very passionate about church planting.

Each planter and spouse is assigned their own assessor. The assessor was given a lot of information about us beforehand including references, a several page questionnaire that Shawn was required to answer beforehand, our Grip/Brinkman results, StrengthsFinder results, employment history, church background, etc. We spent a considerable amount of time just talking with our assessor.  Shawn talked about his ministry vision, we shared our backgrounds, how God has led us to this point, how we envision working together (what our roles will be), where we want to plant, etc.

We also had a time to sit down with someone trained in the Grip/Brinkman testing who explained our results to us:  our spiritual gifts, our different ways of thinking and working, our needs, and our stress behavior.  That was extremely interesting and enlightening!

All of the planters were given a scenario of a church plant and were required to give a short vision casting speech to interested individuals.  They were only given 15 minutes to prep for this and then had to present their speech to the rest of the group and the assessors.  Everyone was nervous, but all the planters in our group did well (we didn’t get to hear the other groups).  Shawn did really well…he didn’t look one bit nervous even though I know he was. 🙂

Tomorrow is our last long day and then on Friday our assessment will be “delivered”!